This invention relates to a case for displaying food in a supermarket or the like, and more particularly to a modular display case having a plurality of temperature-controlled zones or compartments, which is designed to be easily customized to a specific application.
Increasingly, in the highly competitive supermarket industry, it has become important for retailers to diversify from basic grocery products into the prepared food market, which offers higher profit margins and attracts additional traffic into the store. Such prepared foods typically include hot and cold delicatessen items, such as lunch meats, cheeses, pizza, and fried chicken; baked goods, such as breads, rolls, and pastries; and fresh salads. However, the addition of an extensive prepared food section to a supermarket requires the addition of equipment to display the food items in an attractive manner, while maintaining the temperature of hot or cold items. Accordingly, a supermarket must typically add refrigerated display cases (including freezers), hot display cases, and ambient temperature ("dry") counter space or cases, depending upon the product mix which is to be offered.
It is often desirable to display all of the prepared ready-to-eat foods which a supermarket may offer, whether cold, hot, or dry, in a contiguous area, thereby creating an integrated "food court", perhaps even including a few chairs and tables if space permits. This approach is the nest effective to draw a significant lunchtime crowd, and also best promotes the retailer as being a one-stop complete shopping center. However, a significant difficulty in designing an integrated prepared foods display area is that the existing prior art temperature-controlled food display cases, whether refrigerated or heated, are generally only available as discrete units. Therefore, if one wishes to design a display area offering cold, hot, and dry foods, it must be done by procuring an appropriate number of hot cases, cold cases, and dry cases or counter space, and simply arranging them end to end. For example, if it were desired to include a ten foot hot display compartment, a six foot counter, and an eight foot cold display compartment, this could typically only be accomplished by procuring a stock hot display case which is as close as available to ten feet long (or perhaps two five foot cases), a cold display case as close as possible to eight feet long, and a counter as close as possible to six feet long, and arranging them end to end.
Obviously, this approach is not versatile or aesthetic, and many compromises must be made in the design of a display area because of limitations in the availability of equipment. For instance, compromises may be made in the ratio or arrangement of hot, cold, and dry display space because display cases are only offered in discrete units, and may not be offered in the desired lengths. Additionally, one may not be able to contour a display area in a manner desired, because the cases and counters are only offered in linear sections. Thus, the display area can only turn a corner at the junction of two adjacent cases, and only then by angling one case with respect to the other. This approach is abrupt and awkward looking, and results in a wedge-shaped area at the front or rear of the display area which is excluded from the case interior and is unusable. Another problem is that it may be necessary to procure display cases and counters from different vendors in order to obtain the sizes desired, resulting in a significant risk that the display area will not be aesthetically uniform. Yet another problem is the discontinuity between adjacent display compartments, in that each compartment is separated from its adjacent compartments by two case end walls, both that of its own case and that of the adjacent case. Finally, if a supermarket later decides to modify its display area by changing its arrangement of display compartments or altering the ratio of hot, cold, and dry foods, it may only do so only by rearranging the existing discrete hot, cold, and dry cases or by purchasing new cases.
What is needed, therefore, is a new design approach for prepared food display cases which permits complete flexibility in arranging the hot, cold, and dry display areas, has a unitary and pleasing aesthetic appearance, is able to easily turn corners in a seamless fashion. Also needed is the ability to easily modify an installed case to a new configuration, and the ability to change the arrangement and ratio of hot, cold, and dry zones after installation, in the event that a store's product mix or marketing goals change at some later point in time.